The 41 bodies, burnt beyond recognition in the fire at the garment factory on September 11, will not be handed over to the families till the DNA test results are available, announced the Sindh government on Saturday.
“There will be more chaos if families take the wrong body by mistake,” said Dr Imdadullah Siddiqui, director of medical services at the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. “To avoid such errors, the most reliable and scientific method is DNA testing.”
None of the bodies kept at the Edhi mortuary could be identified by relatives.
The government has already taken samples from the bodies, said Siddiqui. The DNA samples of the relatives of people who are still missing from the fire are being collected at camps set up at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Civil hospital and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
Siddiqui said that the test results could take around two weeks and will be handed over to the police surgeon, Dr Kamaluddin Shaikh, who will share it with the families.
The Edhi Foundation representative said that they have volunteered to keep the bodies for as long as it takes. He said that keeping a body costs around Rs500 per day but Abdul Sattar Edhi wanted to offer as much assistance as he could. “At the time of the Nooriabad accident, we stored the bodies for almost six months and eventually arranged their burials too.”
Around 72 samples have been collected from relatives till now, including the one family which showed up at Abbasi Shaheed on Saturday, said the hospital’s spokesperson.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 16th, 2012.
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